Jones: Sports Hall of Fame nod for Edmonton Grads long overdue

Terry Jones, Edmonton Journal04.19.2017

The Edmonton Grads pose for a team portrait before the Paris Olympics of 1923-24FILE PHOTO
/ Edmonton Journal

Former Toronto Maple Leaf and Calgary Flames player Lanny McDonald (right) chats with Kay McBeth, 95, the last remaining player of the Edmonton Grads basketball team, following a ceremony in which it was announced that they are to be inducted into the Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in Toronto on Wednesday, April 19 , 2017.Chris Young
/ Edmonton Journal

Former Toronto Maple Leaf and Calgary Flames player Lanny McDonald (right) chats with Kay McBeth, 95, the last remaining player of the Edmonton Grads basketball team, following a ceremony in which it was announced that they are to be inducted into the Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in Toronto on Wednesday, April 19 , 2017.Chris Young
/ Edmonton Journal

It was in the late 1960s or early 1970s when Edmonton Journal sports editor Jack Deakin assigned the kid on staff to cover a reunion of the Edmonton Grads.

Prior to getting the assignment, the young sportswriter would sit enthralled at 3 and 4 a.m. with the old newspaperman as he told tales about J. Percy Page and his legendary team.

Deakin colourfully told your correspondent about a team that brought glory to Edmonton that today must seem utterly incomprehensible to several generations of Canadian sports fans, many of whom must look at the Class of 2017 and wonder what they are doing in a line-up that includes Larry McDonald, Simon Whitfield, Mike Weir and Cindy Klasssen.

The Grads were the first team in the history of the City of Champions to own the town, to put Edmonton on the map — and not just nationally but internationally.

A basketball team.

A girls basketball team.

The Edmonton Grads were a team of graduates of McDougall Commercial High School coached by Page, a man who would go on to become Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Alberta and have his own high school named after him.

The Grads drew crowds of more than 6,000 people — ten percent of the population of the place that was a pimple on the prairie compared to what it is today.

The Grads even outdrew the hockey teams of the time featuring players like Eddie Shore, the Edmonton Express. Shore married Grads star Kate Macrae before moving on to the Boston Bruins and making it into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Grads took three tours of Europe and won all three Olympic tournaments (effectively a demonstration sport at the time) at Paris in 1924, at Amsterdam in 1928 and in Berlin in 1936.

Over the years, the Grads played 522 games and won 502, including 17 world championships.

Dr. James A. Naismith, the Canadian won invented the game, called them “the finest basketball team that ever stepped out onto a floor.”

At the reunion Deakin assigned me to cover, I was privileged to meet not only Page but dozens of the women themselves. The players spoke of Page with a reverence I’ve heard few players have for a former coach, no matter the success involved. They explained how he coached them not just to be the glory of their times playing basketball internationally but also in life, representing themselves and their city at all times as ladies first.

Finding myself in Springfield, Mass., with the Edmonton Oilers of the World Hockey Association, I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame, where I discovered a display honouring the team and featuring the uniform of Noel MacDonald, the greatest of the Grads.

And on my first visit to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame — when it was located in Toronto not in it’s current stunning set-up in Calgary — I was blown away by the size of the massive Underwood Trophy — far bigger than the Stanley Cup — that they use to to play for.

It never occurred to me this team, which played from 1915 to 1940, wasn’t actually in the Hall of Fame already.

With the announcement of the Grads selection Wednesday, I couldn’t help but wish it had happened a decade earlier so at least one of them could have been there for the induction.

In 2010, I was invited to the 100th birthday party for Grad Edith Stone Sutton, who used the occasion to proclaim herself “the last living member of the Edmonton Grads” despite the fact her twin sister and team-mate Helen Stone Stewart was still alive in Vancouver and teammate Kay MacRitchie MacBeth was living in Comox, B.C..

“Look at me,” she said. I’m the last one. All by myself,” she told the small gathering that included mayor Stephen Mandel.

Then she laughed.

“It’s lonely at the top.”

Posing for a picture with me she hooted “Imagine, at my age, being interviewed by a sportswriter!”

Imagine, if at her age, she would have represented the team being inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.

At least there’s one still living. MacBeth, 95, can be there for the induction.

tjones@postmedia.com

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